Stratford House, London

JUST STEPS AWAY from Oxford Street, one of London’s busiest thoroughfares, rests a quiet little street called Stratford Place probably familiar only to Tanganyikans or Batswana seeking counsel from their countries’ high commissions. At the termination of the dead-end street sit the stately quarters of the Oriental Club: Stratford House. The club was founded in 1824, as British involvement and influence in both India and the Orient was waxing rapidly. General Sir John Malcolm, sometime Ambassador of His Britannic Majesty to the Court of the Peacock Throne (which is to say, Persia), coordinated the founding committee and advertised a club which would draw its members from “noblemen and gentlemen associated with the administration of our Eastern empire, or who have travelled or resided in Asia, at St. Helena, in Egypt, at the Cape of Good Hope, the Mauritius, or at Constantinople.” (more…)

I’m rather fond of the little coin logo of the Classical Association of South Africa, which appears on the front page of the society’s scholarly journal, Acta Classica: Verhandelinge van die Klassieke Vereniging van Suid-Afrika.

CASA also publishes, in cooperation with Stellenbosch University, Akroterion: Tydskrif vir die Klassieke in Suid-Afrika.

The study of our ancient civilisation is alive & well in South Africa!

Yale University announced in 2008 that it would erect two new residential colleges in order to expand its undergraduate population without putting further strain on the twelve residential colleges that currently exist. Reportedly, Yale officials took a look at the new Whitman College at Princeton University, designed by traditional architect Demetri Porphyrios and decided even that wasn’t traditional enough. They commissioned Robert A. M. Stern, an architect who has, on occasion, proved exceptionally capable in traditional styles (the American Shingle style in particular), to design the two new colleges at the Connecticut university.

While the new colleges are currently being referred to as ‘North College’ and ‘South College’, there is little doubt that each college will find a generous benefactor who will endow it with funds and in return deign to allow the college to be named after the deep-pocketed soul.

The new colleges will, appropriately, be built in the Collegiate Gothic style, but will be faced in brick instead of stone. Brick facing in Gothic-style buildings always leaves one with a slight dissatisfaction, I’m afraid. Still, the decision to build in a traditional style is of course commendable.

For a commentary on the Collegiate Gothic of today, see this bit from Dino Marcantonio.

Here follow a few of the architect’s renderings of the new colleges. (more…)

Tintinophilia and its allied science of Tintintology can almost seem like a cult sometime, with Moulinsart, the commercial wing of the Hergé Foundation, acting feverishly to quell any and all unauthorised outbreaks of Tintin resurrection. Their assiduity notwithstanding, Tintin pastiches are fairly common (though illegal) and vary in nature from respectful admiration to downright mockery. The Quebecois cartoonist Yves Rodier is one of the foremost pasticheurs of the famous Belgian boy reporter, and produced this cover (above) of a non-existant Tintin book set in the beautiful capital city of Canada’s French province.

While Tintin did visit Scotland in The Black Isle, I’d love to see a Tintin in Edinburgh book, and even more so Tintin in the Cape.

IT IS A DESIGN masterstroke, combining simplicity and ease of recognition with layers of symbolism. The emblem of the Scottish National Party is just one single line that descends, turns around, and crosses itself, but while remaining uncomplicated manages to evoke the Saltire (Scotland’s flag), the thistle (Scotland’s flower), and — the pudding which has given the logo its nickname — the clootie dumpling, a Scots specialty. And yet, despite its ubiquity, there is surprisingly little to be found online about the history of the SNP’s clootie dumpling.

The emblem was commissioned by William Wolfe (right) in 1962 for the parliamentary by-election in which he was standing as the Scottish Nationalist candidate. The party had typically employed a lion rampant as its symbol, which Wolfe thought too complex, and got Julian Gibb (in his own words, “scarcely out of childhood”) to design the brilliantly simple logo. “A political visionary with an eye for iconography,” according to Gibb, Wolfe used the emblem in the unsuccessful by-election campaign and a year later successfully proposed it to the party for adoption as the party emblem.

“The adoption of a geometric logotype is a bold act for a political organisation, especially a nationalist one, with the swastika a not too distant memory,” writes Gibb. “But the inner logic of the thing was persuasive. Forbye imagined allusions to saltire, thistle, and clootie dumpling, there was perhaps something irresistible about virile angularity supported on swelling curvature, implying among other things that in this outfit, the mechanistic depended on the organic. At one end of the scale of application it was devised to be hastily slapped on walls with a furtively loaded brush (the aerosol age had yet to come) and a quick flick of the wrist – no skill required. Try doing that with the lion rampant.” (more…)

THROUGH JUNE 13, the National Gallery in London is exhibiting “Christen Købke: Danish Master of Light”, a small show of the neglected Danish Golden Age painter but the first exhibition exclusively of his works outside of Denmark. “Kobke generally chooses the quietest corner, or a view from the side,” writes Waldemar Januszczak in The Times. “What fascinates him is the way light falls on the old stones, or the tufts of grass growing between the cracks. Throughout his art, whether he is painting landscapes or people, Købke seems always to be noticing the decay of the world he grew up in.” Januszczak suggests that the warmth of Købke’s work is in reaction to the turbulence of his country’s position in Europe at the time — Denmark backed the wrong horse in the Napoleonic wars and turned to neutrality, only to face a pre-emptive attack by the British in which Copenhagen was ferociously bombarded. The painter was born three years after this humiliation, and at age 12 began his studies at the Royal Danish Academy, where he studied under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, the ‘Father of Danish painting’.

The talented Købke painted portraits, landscapes, and other scenes. The show at the National Gallery includes my favourite Købke portrait, that of his friend and fellow artist, the landscape painter Frederik Hansen Sødring, on loan from Copenhagen’s Hirschsprung Collection.

His capability aside, what I like about Købke is that he is a certifiable local boy, rarely straying from the vicinity of his native Copenhagen except for the period of study in Italy required of the academically trained artist. His portraits are of his family and his friends, his landscapes of nearby rustic lanes and royal castles. A shame he died of pneumonia just 37 years old.

I haven’t had the chance to view any of his works in the flesh, but Londoners might want to avail themselves of this rare chance to see most of Købke’s capable work while on show in the metropolis. (more…)

In the first quarter of 2010, CNN’s flagship news anchors ratings dropped by fifty percent — half their entire viewership! The New York Times continues to slide towards bankruptcy and irrelevance (who wants to pay two dollars a day to be lied to?). Exhibiting a tremendous amount of cheek, the Times Company (which owns both the Times and the Boston Globe) threatened to shut the Boston Globe unless the staff agreed to $20 million in cuts. This year, the $20 million made by salary and benefits cuts across the board at the Globe were awarded in compensation to just two Times Company employees, Chairman Arthur Sulzberger and Chief Executive Janet L. Robinson. Meanwhile, the Company’s profits are collapsing along with its circulation and ad revenue, while its debt increases.

Not everyone’s stock is going down, however. Anna Arco reports a greater-than-usual surge in Mass attendance during Holy Week at the Stefansdom in Vienna, as well as at Westminster Cathedral and the Brompton Oratory in London.

The only advice one could dispense to CNN, the Times, et al. is the aphorism that he who marries the spirit of the age is soon widowed.

A number of prominent French men & women have written a ‘call to truth’ supporting Pope Benedict XVI in the current media storm and pedophilia scandal. As the Appeal’s about page says, Pope Benedict XVI “is the first pope to address head-on, without compromise, the problem. Paradoxically, he is the subject of undermining and personal attacks, attacks relayed with a certain complacency on the part of the press”.

The list of original signatories includes writers, essayists, literary critics, bloggers, professors, philosophers, businessmen, senators, members of parliament, mayors, publishers, actors, a Protestant minister, a Fields medal winner, and even a sexologist.

The ‘Appel à la Vérité’ is reproduced, in an unofficial English translation, below:

THE OLD STADTSCHLOSS of Potsdam, destroyed by aerial bombing during the Second World War, will rise again next to the Old Market in the Brandenburg capital. The provincial government has decided to rebuild the old Stadtschloss to serve as a home for the Landtag, Brandenburg’s provincial parliament. While it was first conceived of building a modern building on the site, or having some reconstructed façades and others modern, a €20-million donation from the software entrepreneur Hasso Plattner has ensured the façades and massing of the building will follow the outline of the old stadtschloss. The interiors will be simple and modern, and to keep the costs down, much of the finer Baroque detailing of the façades will not be included. “I hope,” Herr Plattner said, “that the necessary compromises do not diminish the great impression overall.” (more…)

The richness and variety of South African periodicals printed during the first half of the twentieth century can surprise even the most devoted fans of the country. The circumstances at the bottom end of Africa were too particular to be overly influenced by the thought and talk of the imperial metropolis of London, and a miniature South African literary renaissance took place during the 1920s & 30s.

Among the publications one might stumble upon is Voorslag (“Whiplash”), founded by the poet Roy Campbell (who later moved to Spain, converted to Catholicism, and supported Franco during the Spanish Civil War). Campbell had returned to South Africa from England in 1924 in the hopes that his well-to-do relations in Durban might help support the struggling intellectual and his family. After finding financial backers, Campbell (with William Plomer and Laurens van der Post) launched Voorslag two years later in 1926. (more…)

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World commissioned Selldorf Architects, previously responsible for the renovation of the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue, to restore and upgrade the townhouse at 15 East 85th Street purchased to house the Institute. The house was built in 1899 but altered beyond recognition in 1928 after its purchase by Ogden Mills Reid, editor-in-chief of the New York Herald-Tribune. After the editor’s death, Mrs. Reid sold it to the American Jewish Committee, who used it as their headquarters until its sale to the Leon Levy Foundation, which endowed the creation of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University in 2006. (more…)

Among the unfortunate recent victims of Manhattan’s extortionately exorbitant rents is the Librairie Française. Last year the venerable New York institution had its rent raised from $360,000 to $1 million per year. The shop was founded in 1928 by Isaac Molho a Sephardic Jew from Salonika, who was invited by David Rockefeller himself to rent a space on the Promenade in Rockefeller Center in 1935. The Maison Française, in which the Librairie was located, flanked the south side of the Promenade, with the British Empire Building flanking the north — the bit of greenery in-between is called ‘Channel Gardens’ accordingly. The sign on the façade said ‘Librairie de France’ but in conversation I have never heard it referred to as anything other than the Librairie Française.

During the Second World War, the shop also operated a publishing house called La Maison Française that printed Gaullist propaganda as well as titles by French writers like Jacques Maritain, André Maurois, Jules Romains, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was the post-war period, however, in which the Librairie Française flourished. (more…)

All of Them More Beautiful than the Current Parliament Building

IT IS ONE OF those curious aspects of Edinburgh: its multiplicity of parliament buildings. The Estaits of Parliament, as they were known in the old days — consisting of the three estates of prelates, lairds, and burghers — first met in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle in 1140, though the first gathering of which we have primary source material was at Kirkliston in 1235, during the reign of Alexander II. The body led a somewhat peripatetic existence, meeting wherever was convenient, and even met for a year in St Andrews, where the building which housed it is still known as Parliament Hall. Indeed, that august edifice is home to the proceedings of the Union Debating Society, where the germinal gasbags of Scotland, and indeed of all three kingdoms, first enter the fray of political discourse.

In 1997, nearly three-hundred years after the Parliament was abolished, it was decided to bring it back, albeit in much reduced form. Great were the rumours and discussions about what effect the return of legislative power might have on the country, and Edinboronians pondered where the body might be housed. There were obvious choices, and less obvious choices, but in the end the Westminster government decided to go for the choice that hadn’t been suggested at all and built one of the most heinous offences against the sensibilities of taste that the land has ever seen. And so, the fact is that Scotland has three beautiful parliament buildings, none of which it uses. (more…)

While this Cape Dutch mansion sits in the hills of Montecito in California, it bears the name (and style) of an old Cape Peninsula town. “Constantia” was designed by Ambrose Cramer (take a peek at his nifty grave) in 1929 for Arthur & Grace Meeker, with landscaping by Lockwood deForest, Jr. The Meekers sold the house to the architect Jack Warner. In the late 1960s, Stewart & Katherine Abercrombie bought the place, and hosted the Dalai Lama on one of his trips to the United States. It was the subject of a 1979 feature in Architectural Digest. The place is for sale, currently listed at $17,900,000. (more…)

Various sources have brought to light the new film “Lourdes” by the Austrian director Jessica Hausner. The film depicts the pilgrimage to Lourdes of a non-particularly religious woman (played by Sylvie Testud) suffering from Mutiple Sclerosis who is healed of her illness. The film by a non-believing director has met with both praise and suspicion from Catholic quarters, and has been compared, at least stylistically, to the work of Michael Haneke (whose latest, “The White Ribbon” is currently showing in New York). Latest to weigh in is the Catholic Herald‘s indispensable Anna Arco, who writes:

I saw it as an exercise in theodicy where God loses. In a quiet dispassionate way, Jessica Hausner, the film’s Austrian director, paints a bleak picture of a world where fate is a blind, arbitrary force and human beings clutch at the straws of faith, half-truths in their cowardly despair. The suffering are not healed, human nature is selfish and the problem of pain is not solved. God can’t exist because he isn’t fair. Christianity offers a web of half-truths obscuring a nihilistic reality.

Miss Arco recently spoke with the director, and the interview will be published in the next Catholic Herald. (more…)

George Hitchcock, The Annunciation
Oil on canvas, 62½ in. x 80½ in.
1887, Art Institute of Chicago

The Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith — noted for the fact that his books are actually a pleasure to read — pens a letter to readers every few months. In the latest letter, he mentions that he recently attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in Rajasthan’s famous “Pink City”:

But the visit to Jaipur was not all literary festival. My wife and I paid a visit to the Mother Theresa Home in the city, which was, as you can imagine, a very moving experience. Over two hundred residents, most of them with nowhere else to go, no possessions, and no money, are looked after by some seven sisters. These sisters are tireless – completely tireless – and give their lives over to the living care of these abandoned people.

At a time when the Catholic Church is coming under severe criticism for its failures (which have been, understandably, very much in the news), we should perhaps remember the extraordinary work of people such as the nuns of this community, who have done so much to bring love into the lives of those who have nothing and who would otherwise die alone and uncared for. I cannot tell you how moved I was by what I saw and by my conversation with the nuns.

An apposite reminder.

If you haven’t yet read Prof. McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series, I suggest you float down to your nearest bookseller and purchase the first installation (handily titled 44 Scotland Street) today. They are a procession of delightful stories surrounding a number of fictional characters in an Edinburgh townhouse, and if you’re familiar with the capital city, you might just come a cross the occasional non-fictional friend interspersed amongst the creations of McCall Smith’s mind.

Van al die operahuise in Afrika, die helfte is in Suid-Afrika — dink jy, daar is net vier operahuise in die vasteland. Nietemin, opera het ’n ryk en vrugbaar tradisie in die land, en die koningin van Suid-Afrikaanse opera-sangers is die sopraan Mimi Coertse. Sy was in Durban gebore in 1932 en het haar stem-opleiding in Suid-Afrika voltooi. In 1953, Coertse het die uitsaaier en komponis Dawid Engela getroud. (Engela het sy “Huwelikskantate” vir hul troue saamgestel). In Januarie 1955, Coertse het haar opera debuut gemaak in ’n kleine rol in Parsifal by die Teatro San Carlo in Napels.

Dit was 17de Maart 1956 — St. Patrick’s Day — toe Coertse die rol van die Koningin van die nag gesing in “Die Zauberflöte” met die Weense Staatsopera in Oostenryk. Sy het met die Weense Staatsopera vir meer as twintig jare gebly. Gravin Christl Schönfeld onthou:

In sy lang voortgang, Mimi Coertse het baie eerbewyse opgestapel. In 1961, die Medalje van Eer van Die Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns; in 1966, die prestige titel van “Kammersängerin” vanaf die regering van Oostenryk; in 1985, die Suid-Afrikaanse Dekorasie vir Voortreflike Diens; en in 1996, die “Oesterreichische Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst” (Oostenrykse Erekruis vir Wetenskap en Kuns) — die hoogste kunsdekorasie van Oostenryk.

Waar is sy nou? Sedert 1998, Mimi Coertse bestuur die “Black Tie Ensemble” — ’n projek om die verandering tussen opleiding en professionele uitvoering te versag. ’n Halfeeu van diens in die kunste voortsit!

I’ve only just discovered the blog of The New York Review of Books and found this entry on blogging in eighteenth-century France (if you will) interesting.

A friend accuses me of being able to connect everything back to either Scotland or South Africa, depending on my whim, and this blog post provides a handy example. It’s author is Robert Darnton, a Harvard cultural historian and expert on eighteenth-century France. Professor Darnton is the son of the much-respected war correspondent Byron Darnton, who was killed during the war while reporting in New Guinea. (Gen. MacArthur, a difficult man to impress, held Darnton père in such regard that he informed Darnton’s widow and his newspaper, The New York Times, personally).

In 1943, a year after his death, a Liberty ship was christened the U.S.S. Byron Darnton. After the war, the Byron Darnton was beached off the isle of Sanda in Scotland. The pub on Sanda — one of the most isolated pubs in the country — is now named The Byron Darnton after the ship that was named after the father of Prof. Robert Darnton.

So there, from eighteenth-century French blogging to twenty-first-century Scottish pubs.

Torontonians or those in the general vicinity of that metropolis might be interested in attending the upcoming launch of Seraphic‘s new book, Seraphic Singles: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Single Life. Of course, Dorothy is no longer single but instead happily married to a Scottish friend of mine, and you can see her gleefully prancing about the grounds of the Historical House the happy couple now call their home in this 4m29s video clip.

But when & where’s the book launch you say? It’s Thursday, March 25, from 7:00–10:00pm at the Duke of York Pub, 39 Prince Arthur Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, in God’s Own Dominion of Canada. The book is printed by the Canadian publisher Novalis, and is already obtainable from Amazon.com. Copies of the book will also be available for purchase at the book launch.

Instagram: @andcusack

Most Recent Posts

• Amsterdam November 26, 2024
• Silver Jubilee November 21, 2024
• Articles of Note: 11 November 2024 November 11, 2024
• Why do you read? November 5, 2024
• India November 4, 2024

Most Recent Comments

• Peter Forster on The Catholic Apostolic Church, Edinburgh
• Andrew Cusack on Articles of Note: 11 November 2024
• L G Clark on Articles of Note: 11 November 2024
• L Gaylord Clark on Why do you read?
• Frédéric on Why do you read?
• Herbert Raubenheimer on University Nicknames in South Africa
• Arthur Black on The Situation at St Andrews
• K. Dontoh on An Aldermanian Skyscraper
• L G Clark on Equality
• B T Van Nostrand on Rough Notes of Kinderhook

Book Wishlist

Monthly Archives

Categories